Retired from the University of Texas and too old to play soccer anymore. Now, in the twilight of his years, time is spent writing in this blog, hiking and exploring Texas Parks, photography, working out, gardening and tending to the five ponds he built .

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We Won

On my drive to the fields this morning, I was thinking about the poor training session we had on Thursday and I was concerned that the disjointed training might have a negative effect on today’s game. Turns out, the team must have read my thoughts because they arrived ready to play.

The warm ups are always a good indicator of which team has shown up and today, they were bright, eager and really got after it. I was busy warming up Ali who was substituting for Jack in-goal and just had the occasional glance at the rest of the team as they played 6v6 keep away and only had to stop them a couple of times and that was to remind them not to bunch up.

The defence is beginning to establish itself as are many of the other positions so picking a starting line up is getting much easier. We still have a few questions at halfback and forward but they are getting worked out.

Today, the boys played very well and collected a 4-3 win with the other team scoring quite literally, a last-minute goal. As a team, we played much better and managed to string passes together for probably the first time this season. We have been working on releasing the ball quicker and I saw some of that today. It still needs some work as some of the players, when they receive the ball, are still wanting to dribble instead of pass or clear. The hardest thing for these young boys is to learn to dribble or control with their head up instead of watching the ball all the time. They are so afraid that they will lose control but it will improve as we keep working on it. They have learned a lot and the kids are much more willing to try it my way.

The usual suspects played very well and I thought that Ali was very confident in goal. His kicking was very strong. There were four very well taken goals and the ones scored against us are all things we can work on. The weather was absolutely beautiful, a warm, bright, Fall day.

Next week is the last of our scheduled games and we are considering going to the San Antonio tournament on the weekend of Nov 19/20. This will be a fun way to end the season.